Taking Deep Breaths

I received an email from the church in Pueblo that I interviewed with last Thursday (Feb 10). It basically said we feel like it went well, but we still have a few more interviews to go through this coming week. The way I read it was "We fee like it went well," Deep breath, as I ready myself for a nice let down thinking the email would say "but we have decided to move on without you." Fortunately, this wasn't the case, but like always, it got me to thinking.

Why am I so worried to hear a no? We all seek affirmative answers in our lives whether the answers affirm our abilities, create a welcomed outcome to a heavy burden, or simply want to he an affirmative answer to our prayers. Kadra and I's prayer have been for God to be creating a place to which we will go after Seminary where God has called us since before time. We want to so badly for any church to call us and hire us, but we do not want to consider the doors that God is closing. As we have found in the past, closed doors only lead to how glorious the door that is opened. God's negative answer is hard to deal with because we are not God, we cannot see into the near to even far off future that God has planned for us that is far greater than any "other side of the fence" that we can think of. The grass may seem very green at any church that we interview with, but the green may only be a part of the carpet that is rolled out for an inquirer for that church.

The reality is that there is a plan. We dont know it, and as much as I wish I did know God's plan, I simply am not God. Its why the Bible refers to God as the Holy Other, or what the statement of "I am" simply means: "I am and you are not." I am the Aplha and Omega, beginning and end, a lion and a lamb, the priest and the sacrifice, holy and just, and loving yet full of wrath. All of these things accumulate to the God of our lives that is at work reconciling us to God's Triune self.

Yet, we still fear a negative answer. We still hope for an affirmative answer. But we cannot imagine the highth nor depth that God loved us in sending the Son. So in the negative answer, we look to the Holy Spirit to lead us to the affirmation that is the call in all of our lives to live for God and love our neighbor. All else is in the details.

So, regardless of a yes or no answer, God has always provided for the birds and the bees. So why do I, do we, worry?


Lord, lead us. Lord, call us. Lord, send us. And all the while, Lord comfort and love us. Amen